Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Christmas endeavors

Just for information, for those who've been wanting to know (I'm sure you know who you are), here's a picture of my Christmas tree:

I'll be heading to bed soon. I was up late last night if you can believe it because I made the "movie" last night of the pictures accompanying "Let All Mortal Flesh" in yesterday's post. I could not find a version I liked on youtube. One by Michael Talbot was close, but in the final verse he left out the references to the "six-winged seraph" and "cherubim with sleepless eyes," and just sang the final four lines twice.

The words are more important to me than the pictures. In previous Advent posts, I linked to youtube videos where the pictures were not hot, once to Mario Lanza's mug all through his rendition of "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and the other to a group of Belgians singing "Joy to the World" apparently in someone's home. I think the "Bethlehem" choice was either to get all the verses or to get the least melodramatic rendition. Sometimes when famous singers record Christmas carols, they think they have to assert their personality by singing the song as it's never been sung before. I, however, like to hear it as it's been sung before. The reason for the Belgians singing "Joy to the World" was because nearly all others left out the verse about "No more let sin and sorrow . . . . far as the curse is found." Maybe words like sin, sorrow, and curse are too much of a downer for pop singers to mention.

Anyway, I couldn't find a video with all the verses of "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence," but eventually I found an mp3 that I liked. I didn't know how to upload just a sound file to blogspot, so I used Windows MovieMaker to match the song to pictures I found here and there on the web. What with browsing for pictures and then arranging the order and timing of them, it was suddenly the middle of the night while I was working on it. I kind of like the final product though, don't you?